FrontierVille Cheats & Tips: Four easy ways to get ahead

Zynga's wild west game FrontierVille launches on Facebook today, and we asked Brian Reynolds, Zynga's chief game designer to give us a few tips on how to get a leg up on turning your wilderness property into a bustling frontier town.

1. "Every time you go and visit a neighbor you can get a little bit of energy back. The more energy you have, the more things you can do. That kind of combines with getting more reputation and then getting more energy."

2. "The other things that happens: Little stories and goals appear now and then, and make sure you take a look at those, because those have good bonuses at the end."

3. When you hire friends with a higher reputation, you get more money.

4. "Eventually, you might be able to figure out where the snakes come from. If you look under a skull, there's often a snake. The fun thing about a snake is that you get a whole bunch of bonuses for getting rid of a snake. So it can actually be really good to -- if you want to get a lot of stuff -- go looking for snakes."